GOVERNMENT MUST PURCHASE MAIZE EARLY TO AVOID LATE PAYMENT - MKUSHI FARMERS

By Chambwa Moonga
MKUSHI District Farmers Association chairman Richard Lisimba says the trend of late payments to farmers will only be resolved if the government starts purchasing the crop early. 
During his visit to Mkushi last week on Wednesday, acting Republican President, Dr Guy Scott, hinted that he was hopeful that farmers who supplied maize to the Food Reserve Agency (FRA) in the area would start receiving their payments within that week. 

But in an interview from Mkushi yesterday, Lisimba said the government should quickly clear all the outstanding payments to the farmers as time was running out. He advised that to avoid cases of late payments, the government should stick to earmarked maize tonnages, as buying beyond the target overstretches budgetary allocations. 
The government had this year increased its purchase target from the initial 500,000 metric tonnes to almost a million for strategic food reserves, a move that saw a huge rise in unbudgeted expenditure in the Ministry of Agriculture. 
“I think the biggest problem we have, this is just speaking from experience, government needs to come on the market early and purchase their strategic reserves and as much as possible, not go past the quantities they have said they will purchase because the moment you go over the budget, you have a problem,” Lisimba explained. 
He confirmed that farmers in Mkushi had started receiving their money at Stanbic Bank and Zanaco, but re-emphasised the need for early payments in the next marketing season. 
“They must come on the market as soon as the maize has reached the right moisture content and normally, [the] right moisture content is reached around June/July. Let them come in and buy their 500,000 tonnes in good time and then move out of the market,” Lisimba advised. 
Meanwhile, Lisimba called on millers around the country to be pro-active and start buying maize from farmers “at the correct price”. 
The government had this year set the floor price for a 50 kilogramme bag of maize at K70, an increase from the 2013 offer of K65. 
“Millers must come on the market and buy maize from farmers at the correct price but, they just wait because they know that government will at one time sell to them the FRA maize; all they (millers) need to do is trigger in the price increases of mealie-meal,” said Lisimba.  
CREDIT SOURCE: http://www.postzambia.com/news.php?id=5000#sthash.xYQ9NUPq.dpuf